RuPaul's Drag Race

04/21/2014

Yes, I've been watching Season Six, and yes, I've been getting into it. I don't have the free time this year that I had last year, which is why I haven't been recapping--sorry, I miss it too! My pick-for-the-win has been BenDeLaCreme from the beginning, and I'm still rooting hard for her, though I think we can all agree that this season is clever Bianca's to lose, and that if they spun off "Bianca Del Rio's School for Girls," we would all watch the shit out of that. I'm totally endeared by Joslyn (she's 100% my Miss Congeniality pick), I'm begrudgingly enjoying Adore more and more each week, and I swing back and forth hard on how much I like Courtney. I've liked Darienne from the start, and I recognize and sympathize with the phenomenon of hangry-shade.

And I love my Atlanta queen, Trinity K. Bonet. I only wanted one thing out of Season Six--for Atlanta to send a queen, and for that queen to make it past the Snatch Game--and Trinity made good! She's a great live performer (if you're in Atlanta, catch her Thursday nights at Burkhart's, among other places), and you all saw for yourselves how she slays a lip sync.

So anyway, I assembled a supercut of Trinity's time on RuPaul's Drag Race!

I've also been fantasy-casting Season Seven. My top pick from Atlanta will be a familiar name to loyal readers of this blog: the incomparable Evah Destruction. This time last year, I began writing about Evah as an unbiased local fan: we’d never spoken before; I didn’t know her age or boy-name or personal history; all I did know was how brilliant Evah was on-stage, every time I watched her perform. This year, though, my endorsement is totally biased: Evah has turned into a dear friend, and recently, we've also become video collaborateurs. She and I filmed her painting process for a hyperspeed paint video; here's what it takes to turn handsome Alex into gorgeous Evah.

Finally, here are some parting GIFs: Trinity's stone-cold reaction shots have been slaying me all season. Three of my favorites:

"Really."

#SideEye

I don't know why this last one cracks me up so hard, but it's kind of perfect, right? (Party.)

12/08/2013

I'm going to assemble an in-depth first look at the Season Six cast for you, with links and factoids and tidbits to help you choose your early favorites, but for now, let's look at the entire cast of RuPaul's Drag Race Season Six, presented alphabetically. All my love to the RuPaul's Drag Race subreddit, who helped ID some of the queens whose identities hadn't leaked. Here are your 2014 Racing Queens:

05/27/2013

I've seen a word dropped a couple times recently, and it's my new favorite word: glamp.

Glamp is, of course, a portmanteau of "Glamour" and "Camp." There are a lot of ways to define the total package in drag, and glamp is a fresh name for a particular flavor of total-package drag queen, a style that seems to be rising in both popularity and success.

The concept isn't new, just the word: the glamp queen delivers polish and entertainment in equal measure. She has the beauty and glamour of her more-traditional pageant sisters, but she also came here to put on a goddamn show. She's a crowd-pleaser. She's smart drag.

I certainly don't intend to disparage queens who don't have glamp in their wheelhouse: there are a thousand ways to do drag, and the refrain "If you're not ____, you're not doing drag" is very rarely true. There's also a difference between being an excellent drag queen, and being the sort of queen who excels specifically at the game of RuPaul's Drag Race (or, for that matter, at any given drag competition/pageant). Finally, you don't have to be campy to be entertaining, and I don't mean to imply
that, either--many drag queens are captivating performers without being
comediennes.

All that said: glamp has absolutely become an unspoken gold standard on RuPaul's Drag Race, favored by the fans and RuPaul alike.

Because what does RuPaul want? Beautiful, magnetic queens who deliver highly-polished, top-notch en-ter-taint-ment value. In a single word, glamp.

Glamp wins challenges (and lip synchs).

During Season Four, when the judges began clocking Chad Michaels for being "too perfect," where did she take her next challenge performance? Glamp.

The challenges themselves have begun favoring glamp, particularly in Season Five--with a different set of challenges and judging criteria, we would have probably seen a different Top Three.

Perfect example: remember the Top Four challenge from All-Stars? Drag queen heroines and super-villains. In other words, glamp, down.

And, through the many styles of drag that RuPaul has rocked over her long and illustrious career, isn't Ru herself going through a bit of a glamp phase?

Manila Luzon said recently in an interview, "I consider myself a camp queen, but everyone says, 'Oh no, you're too glamorous to be a camp queen.'" The only new thing about glamp is the word itself--it's a concise name for style of drag that's only growing in popularity, and rightly so. Okay, granted, "glamp" also sounds like slang for an STD ("Look out, he's hot trade, but he'll give you the glamp"). I don't care. Glamp! It's the new buzzword for Summer 2013 and RuPaul's Drag Race Season Six. Get into it.

Biggest bummer: No audition videos! I live for audition videos. I could do an entire episode of just audition videos. I was hoping for a whole segment called "Alaska: A Five-Year Casting Retrospective."

Favorite bits: the RuPaul Roast outtakes, the rundown of Drag Queen Musical Ventures, the inclusion of fan art and recappers (whose dick do I need to hire Willam to suck if I want to be included next year?), and the introduction of the new-to-us Alyssa-ism of "Not on tonight!"

Oh, and the video for "The Beginning." What bizarre shinanigans!

As far as I can tell, the plot is this: Alaska, Jinkx, and Roxxxy go for
a breezy desert ride, until Alaska crashes the car and they all die.

They wake up in Gay Heaven, where all the cameras have
Vaseline and nobody's #Chiffonography has to be synchronized to anybody
else's! RuPaul dances a greeting, and they watch their trials from the
acid-magenta clouds: apparently, they're being tried for their own
vehicular manslaughter. Children, this is what happens when you drink until the drag queens look like real girls. Eventually, this Kanga-Ru Court convicts everybody to Tuckahoe State Prison for Ladies, where their mugshots were seemingly used for the Top Three Profile segments that ran earlier in the show.

Or something. If you were able to make any goddamn sense of the video, please explain it to me.

So that's almost our season! In real-time, this Tuesday afternoon, the entire Season Five cast is gathering in Los Angeles, and they're taping the reunion and all four crownings tomorrow afternoon. Yes, four: in addition to Miss Congeniality, they'll film all three of Alaska, Jinkx, and Roxxxy being crowned the winner, and nobody (even the queens themselves) will know the true winner until the Monday night finale broadcast. Which means that in less than twenty-four hours, we'll have already crowned Schrödinger's Next Drag Superstar!

I took this photo last night, at the Atlanta RuPaul's Drag Race viewing party at Blake's. (Clock my amazing tacky-ass race-flag nails, by the way.) Here's my official final-vote alliance, via the awesome Team Buttons they gave us:

I truly cannot choose. I hate giving the pageant answer, but I want two crowns. I'll be happy either way.

I know this is hella premature, but perhaps because I'm already satisfied with the conclusion of Season Five, I must admit: I'm already really, really excited about Season Six. (You've read my Season Six casting endorsement, right?) I do have a hope for the editing on Season Six, though. I don't want this Top Three:

The dagger-tongued villain, whose tragic childhood doesn't quite excuse the shade she throws at the oddball ingenue, and

Their mutual friend, the older-sister voice of reason, well-connected in the drag community and an excellent queen in her own right, who provides a diplomatic bridge among the Top Three.

Because those finalists? We did that in Seasons Four and Five. It didn't have to be that way: Jinkx's meek-bullied-odd-duck edit felt increasingly forced as the season progressed (and the queens, including Jinkx, have all said that Jinkx wasn't nearly as timid as she was made to look), and while Roxxxy did lash out, she apologized for each attack over and over, during filming and during broadcast. And yet, we got the Jinkx-the-protagonist, Alaska-the-big-sister, Roxxxy-the-villain edit to this season's endgame.

(Of course, if Jinkx wins on Monday night, Alaska's chances of winning All Stars Season Two look very good.)

I don't want a protagonist in Season Six. When I first watched Season Three, it wasn't my favorite, but I've come to appreciate the lack of protagonist-narrative it had. Of course, Jinkx (and Sharon) didn't choose their edits, didn't cast themselves as the protagonists of their seasons--but their actions and antics that ran counter to the edits chosen for them were left on the cutting room floor. I hope that Season Six doesn't have to be this way: the show will benefit from allowing more of the whole-people of the queens to show, and while that might make the producers' jobs more complicated, it would also make the show more interesting.

Okay, my stilettos are punching holes through the top of this soapbox. Anyway. I'm hella excited for the national game of Where's Waldo? we'll get to play this summer, when a dozen-or-so drag queens quietly disappear from their regular gigs for a couple months (you guys will help me figure out who's gone missing, right?). And I'm looking forward to finding out the official cast list, and watching dozens of grainy bar-performance videos on YouTube and guessing who's the most sick'ning of the bunch. And although I'm going to keep this blog active after Season Five is over, I'm really, really looking forward to watching the first Season Six queen strut through those big pink werkroom doors in January.

That's it for this week! Give me quantifiable validation on Facebook and Twitter (do you like me? Or do you Like-button-me-like-me? I hope you Like me!), and stay tuned: the season's almost over, but we're not done here yet, darlings!

04/25/2013

It's the end of werkroom days. No more wacky mini-challenges, no more racing to the supplies table or jostling at the make-up mirror, no more hoping to not lip synch. It's the music video. It's the victory lap. It's the Final Three.

As we bid adieu to Detox's waggling Black & Decker Pecker Wrecker, the queens do the math. What a difference a single challenge makes: Jinkx's record-breaking eight-week run of highs and wins has ended in her first Lip Synch For Your Life. Meanwhile, Alaska's timely victory has secured a three-way tie for challenge wins, and Alaska is the only finalist who hasn't lip synched. The momentum is potentially meaningful: except for Manila, every queen who's won the Top Four Ball Challenge went on to win her season of RuPaul's Drag Race.

Pictured: by some measures, your eleventh-hour frontrunner.

Roll credits! Top Three Fantasy, Top Three Fantasy! Our finalists dance into the werkroom, and Ro and Laska have notes from Tox.

Not that Detox owed Jinkx a note, but it still feels like a snub: no note for Jinkxy.

nb: Detox has been diligent about answering tweets over the last couple weeks, but when I asked her if some shady producer had stolen/hidden her note to Jinkx, she didn't reply, and I couldn't find any fuss about it elsewhere on her Twitter timeline either. I'd been wondering if the missing note was part of the Jinkx-the-Protagonist edit, but it's probably safe to say that Detox genuinely didn't leave anything for Jinkx.

Oooh, girl. It's your very last SheMail, and it comes with Michelle Visage!

The video this year will be "The Beginning," and before the final runway, the queens will meet with Gloria Allred and have their time-honored Tic Tac lunch with RuPaul herself. Don't fuck it up!

Michelle trades out with choreographer Candis Cayne, who introduces us to #Chiffonography. (I maintain that #Chiffonography is correctly spelled with the hashtag.)

In the most predictable failing since Coco started slapping Tang on Horchata, Alaska still can't dance. Say, isn't Abby Lee Miller a fan of the show, and isn't her studio in Pittsburgh? It might be time for a weekend werkshop with the Haus of Haunt.

Thankfully, we move on to #Candisography's next segment. Roxxxy knows how to werk a wind machine, but Alaska and Jinkx struggle, and the post-production editors treat us to a hilarious woodchipper sound effect as Jinkx whips her wig into the fan.

There's no time to fish Jinkx's hair out of the fan, because we're moving on to the music video shoot! It feels like an homage to To Wong Foo, Thanks For Everything! Julie Newmar initially, until Mathu Andersen tells the girls that they're "going to fly to heaven." They even see RuPaul in the clouds!

Hermione, Harry, and Ron chase the train to Hogwarts fabulously.

(There wasn't a flying car in To Wong Foo, was there? Last time I saw that movie, it was college and I was drunk.)

We're treated to highlights of Roxxxy and Jinkx's wigs tangling, and Jinkx having an adorable narcoleptic-at-the-wheel moment.

Does Absolut make a helium-and-speed cocktail? Because the next portion of the video shoot is, as Mathu Andersen put it, chipmunkery.

#Karaokraphy

We watch Roxxxy nail it--she definitely chose the best hair for this out of the three of them--and Alaska ultimately succeeds as well. We're not shown any of Jinkx's chipmunkery at all, which leads me to believe that her performance was on-point too--if she'd struggled, they would have shown it.

Finally, it's time to film the dreaded dancing, and although we see a few moments of Alaska making mistakes, I'm convinced she pulled it together quickly and the #Chiffonography worked itself out for all three queens. Why? Because we skipped one of my favorite schadenfreude moments of every season: Mathu Andersen freaking out with exasperation during the video shoot.

Humor my unkindness for a moment, but some people are really funny when they're pissed off, and Mathu Andersen is one of them. Remember this episode from seasons 3 and 4: he can be a mean old queen with zero tolerance for fuckery on these video
shoots, and anybody who screws up can go straight to gay hell, so far as
he's concerned. If Mathu Andersen and Mike Ruiz are bookend challenges
to the entire season, then Mike Ruiz is the tutorial level and Mathu
Andersen is the final boss battle. This year, though, all three queens avoid Mathu's wrath, so I look forward to seeing Alaska's perfect #Chiffonography when they release the final video.

How amazing is Gloria Allred, hunties, and how amazing was she with the queens? All of the amazing, that's how amazing. I loved Alaska, in her confessional, introducing her with a tone of reverence typically reserved for people who came out of Cher's vagina. Ladies, take note of Gloria Allred: this is executive realness.

There better not be any bullshit.

She has no patience for wishy-washy answers and "pageant babble," as she eloguently puts it. "As the kids would say, keep it real. Do you think you can do that?" Gloria Allred keeps it real, chiding Alaska and Roxxxy for imprecise answers and Jinkx for avoiding reading the other queens. I want her to be my terrifying, impossible-to-please mentor. Actually, I want to make a thousand clones of her and make everybody answer to her every once in a while. It would be a bit like getting sent to the principal's office, but we'd all be better for it, right?

Meanwhile, the Tic Tac Luncheons are underway with RuPaul. I always love seeing the queens gag on being that close to Ru when she's in full drag: even after weeks of being up-close-and-personal with boy-RuPaul, and in the same room as her during judging, there's still a wonderfully jazzed energy that each queen brings to her lunch date. RuPaul has an amazing way of setting people at-ease, though, and all three lunches are great for the queens.

We watch Jinkx's first, and Jinkx presents herself swimmingly well, discussing her Broadway aspirations (RuPaul suggests the character of Blanche DuBois) and rocky childhood. Jinkx reflects that perhaps she plays an older character because she missed out on the typical childhood/teenager experience; her drag character is a mother because she'd been in a parental role to her brothers for years. On a sidenote: at Tuesday's Elimination Lunch (which I recapped here), Jinkx gave an update on her family situation: she and her mother "have had a lot of intense conversations" since the show began airing, but that it's brought her family back together--her mother and aunt are speaking again, her youngest brother is doing better, etc. RuPaul's Drag Race: helping families heal since 2009.

Alaska's is next, and she talks about her potential to be "the Kate Middleton of drag," as well as her fear of death. We're treated to a sweet montage of Alaska/Sharon photos while Alaska cries a little, and RuPaul advocates living in the moment. She tells Alaska how proud she is of her, and calls her "sweetheart," and my heart is full. <3

Roxxxy's tee-shirt breaks the fourth wall.

During her lunch, Roxxxy pitches for the big girls. RuPaul calls her an amazing queen, and ...that's all. This editing is officially no longer even trying to be fair, because while we got sweet, personal moments with Alaska and Jinkx, Roxxxy's Tic Tac Luncheon segment is shorter and much less personal. I've told you everything that we saw. Dear Roxxxy: it sucks that you've painted yourself into this corner, gurl. Good luck on All-Stars.

Back from commercial, and all rise! Order in the courtroom, hunties!

Without much elaboration, Roxxxy describes her witness and prosecutor
as "a bitch," and struggles with all three roles. Honestly, her
frustration is understandable: in past seasons' music videos, all the
queens had to do for this segment was pout and stamp a bit, then get
slapped by RuPaul. By comparison, this is some ten-seconds-on-the-clock
Snatch Game Redux action.

Jinkx's characters are great: I loved the mannerisms of her saucy-dish witness and her Wife of Foghorn Leghorn defense attorney.

Alaska was cute too. I loved all three of her very-distinct voices, her trampy little witness was priceless, and I lived for her "We want the T, schtupid!" interaction with Jinkx.

By the way, you need this GIF in your life: Roxxxy's cloud of spittle, floating across the nonplussed visage of Mathu Andersen.

#Mistography

It's lucky that somebody dropped a Xanax in Mathu's coffee this year, because he was very sweet and diplomatic with the increasingly-frustrated Roxxxy. Watching Roxxxy punch Mathu would've gilded the lily on her edit, right?

All three queens are drained after the long day of filming, and Roxxxy lashes out at Alaska and Jinkx. Listening to her words, it's clear that her frustration is more with the competition challenges themselves than with her competitors, but the only people available for screaming-at are Jinkx and Alaska, so they bear the brunt of her anger.

Roxxxy's not exactly wrong, by the way. There is a rhythm to each season of RuPaul's Drag Race, types of challenges that, when categorized, come up semi-predictably each season. This season, in the challenges between the Snatch Game and the amateur make-overs, there was an extra comedy challenge where, in past years, there's been a costuming challenge instead. And, if we're being honest, this courtroom scene was effectively an entire challenge's worth of comedy by itself. Every season is a little different, though--Season Two had two fewer comedy challenges than the other seasons; Season Three had one extra costuming challenge--and it's Roxxxy's poor luck that Season Five was the comedy-heavy season. It doesn't excuse her behavior, but her frustration with this season isn't coming from a completely unfounded place.

Anyway. She goes to bed angry, we go to commercial, and when we come back, it's the Last Day Ever in the werkroom!

I wish we got an entire Final Morning segment that was just "Look at what I brought but never got to wear!"

Roxxxy is still bitter about the amount of comedy in the competition, implying that Jinkx, Alaska, and RuPaul's Drag Race itself are making fun of drag in a way that demeans the art of drag. Jinkx is the defense counsel, explaining that she takes comedy, and the art of comedy in drag, very seriously. (Fun fact: Jinkx and Alaska both have BFAs in theater. Nobody has a degree in mocking their own profession, thank you very much.) In her confessional, Alaska is the voice of cooler heads prevailing; effectively, her stance is "Oh, that incorrigible pageant queen Roxxxy! What a hoot."

Pictured: the gulf between Roxxxy and Jinkx.

Roxxxy's teeth really come out, though, when Jinkx asks, "What has been your favorite moment throughout this competition?" and Roxxxy replies, "Seeing you in the bottom two." In confessional, she cops to the head game: she's trying to upset Jinkx, and it works. I'd be upset too--anybody would.

When Jinkx replies, "It doesn't make me feel good, to talk to other people the way you talk to me sometimes," Roxxxy can't help herself, laying out the narrative for God and everybody: "I know, you're the victim, everybody hates you and nobody gets you." Jinkx replies strongly, insisting that she's not anybody's victim and reminding Roxxxy that she's done well in the competition. It's absolutely true, for Jerick-the-actual-person, but the producers have been building the narrative of Jinkx-the-bullied-odd-duck all season, and Roxxxy spelling it out iced the cake. (Yes, Roxxxy's been apologizing for this non-stop; if you didn't read it before, the details are in my recap of their Elimination Lunch together.)

And on that note, we say goodbye to the werkroom until 2014. Hey, mama!

Best Breasts on Panel awarded to Michelle Visage. Check out that tacky necklace!

I really should think of an award Santino could potentially win each week. Most Smitten With RuPaul? Anyway, my favorite mooning clownfucker is looking very handsome tonight.

Commence.

Shake.

DOWN.

I refuse to nitpick. All three queens look stunning.

The critiques are, overall, positive. Santino, in particular, gives all three queens the compliments they've wanted to hear all season: Roxxxy exudes sex appeal, Jinkx's paint looks amazing and she moves like she knows she's beautiful, and while Alaska had a lot to live up to, she now stands as her own queen, not in anybody's shadow. Atta boy, Santino.

And now... I'm sorry my dears, but you are up for extermination... because the time has come... for you to defend... your life!

Roxxxy speaks first, and she makes the case that she has a grace, beauty, and professionalism that Jinkx and Alaska lack. She wants to be a role model as a thick and juicy girl, and she's proud of her body and her drag. It's a fine speech, but she's also lucky she went first and didn't have to follow either of the other two.

Jinkx lays out her narrative: she grew up an outcast from a troubled home, and drag helped her come to life on stage. She discusses her growth through the competition, and ends with her "Water off a duck's back" catchphrase. It's touching and, not to be crass, it's expertly crafted: I'm not coming for Jinkx when I say that she knows exactly what she's laying out, and similar speeches have won this competition before.

And then, it's Alaska's turn, and she turns the Star Power Firehouse on full-blast, skipping Roxxxy and Jinkx's conversational tone for a much more dramatic delivery. She reads down Roxxxy and Jinkx for their Sugar Ball mishaps, then hits a rhythm of trash to treasure, tragic to magic, and hunties, do not forget that she's the only one who hasn't been in the Bottom Two.

Alaska Thunderfuck: Sharing Responsibility for the Crown of America's Next Drag Superstar.

The judges deliberate, but we know that at this point, it doesn't matter: nobody is being eliminated, and America is going to choose its winner. The queens come back, and for the first time this season, we're given a glimpse of this year's crown. It gets more gorgeous every year, doesn't it?

Like Season Four, all three queens will perform the final Lip Synch For Your Life.

This is the beginning of the rest of your life.

And then, RuPaul lets us know: get on every social media site you can think of, and let your #TeamJinkx and #TeamAlaska flags fly, because this isn't a vote, it's a cheering contest.

Friends: that's our season! We have the clip show next week (which will include this week's skipped Untucked), and on May 6, we'll have the Finale, a reunion and crowning.

I have some thoughts about this season that I'm brewing for another post, but for now, I'd like to direct your attention to the Bad Hessian blog, where Alex Hanna has been doing fascinating statistical work on RuPaul's Drag Race results. While I've been doing addition on my fingers, Alex (aka Kate Silver, hunties) has applied mathematical rigor to the process, and his most recent post analyzes the Twitter traction the finalists are getting. He's got more analysis coming, and I'm living for what he's put together. Check him out!

Okay, sound off: did this episode change your mind on anybody? Do you think this year's winner is a foregone conclusion, or is there still a race on? Hit me up on Twitter and Facebook, and stay tuned, darlings.

04/22/2013

The song, of course, is "I Don't Feel Like Dancin'" by the Scissor Sisters. I've always thought that it was a perfect song to encapsulate the excitement-and-dread of a Lip Synch For Your Life performance, so I spent the season slowly stitching this together. This was certainly a labor of love, but I'm really proud of how it came out. Hope you love it!

04/18/2013

It's the crucial Top Four challenge! Everybody has something to prove today: Jinkx and Roxxxy are vying for dominance in total wins, and it's Alaska and Detox's last chance to catch up. Coco and Alyssa are gone, Ivy and Jade and Lineysha and everybody else are gone, and we're down to ...Rolaskatox and Jinkx.

While we roll the opening credits, I want to take a moment to acknowledge a couple things. One: my apologies for this recap being so late. As I was writing last night, the news of the explosion in West, TX was breaking, and the video from it wrecked my capacity to be snarky about drag queen fashion mishaps. This has been a shitty week in America, but it's heartening to see people rallying around those affected by the tragedies in Boston and West. Hopefully I can do my part to bring you, dear reader, a little levity, by reading some bitches down today. ;-)

Second, a congratulations and shout-out: at the viewing party on Monday night, I found out that my friends Ashley and McCord are engaged!

Aren't they the damned cutest? Marriage equality hasn't made its way to Georgia yet, so I'm lobbying for a New Zealand wedding. Upon hearing the news, Blake's on the Park, the bar in Atlanta where we watch RuPaul's Drag Race each week, brought over champagne to celebrate--thanks, Blake's!

Oh, the show's back on! The top four discuss how Alaska and Jinkx still haven't lip synched for their lives, and Alaska invokes the name of Tyra Sanchez for making Final Three without ever lip synching. (She does not mention the other person who made Top Three their season without lip synching: first-season runner-up Nina Flowers.)

SheMail! RuPaul rattles off a list of candies, but before we can get to the ball challenge, #EverybodyLovesPuppets! This is a reprise of last year's Top Four challenge, complete with the Big Pink Puppet Hole.

RuPaul's joke was A Fist Called Wanda, but I prefer A Fistful of Dolls.

Time for the Punch and Mary show!

Jinkx and Detox do fine with the mini-challenge. Jinkx's Lil' DeDe is a string of exasperated Detox catchphrases, executed in a canny voice, and Detox's Lil' Lasky whines about Sharon, because as we learned from the RuPaul Roast, there's apparently only one best way to come for Alaska.

The show editors get in on the side-by-side action.

Roxxxy's snoozing, over-contoured Lil' Jinkxy starts okay, but derails when Roxxxy narrates from Lil' Jinkxy, "I try to seem so innocent all the time, but I'm really a bitch! I'm here to win it, and you guys have no idea!" Smiles faulter, and once Roxxxy finishes, Alaska tells her only-half-jokingly, "That was rude."

Roxxxy embodies the hashtag #ThatAwkwardMomentWhen

Alaska saves the puppet show and rightfully earns the mini-challenge win with Lil' Poundcake's baby sister, Lil' Miss Thang. If Alaska ever retires from drag, she clearly has a second career in dollmaking; Lineysha wasn't necessary for Lil' Miss Thang's tearaways for her tearaways, haaaaay!

After declaring Alaska the mini-challenge winner, RuPaul introduces the ball challenge, and this year, it's the Sugar Ball! Like past years, the ball challenge is a three-look extravaganza, and the final look must be made from scratch and incorporate an unconventional material. In the past, the "unconventional material" has been fruit, Monopoly money, and live dogs. This year, it's candy!

Where my Peeps at? Where my Peeps at?

Roxxxy is giddy for a "sewing challenge," though everybody seems to have been given a white corset to use as a base. Really, it's a hot glue challenge, maybe an E-6000 challenge if you're really getting fancy-crafty. No matter! The girls set to work.

As soon as Jinkx said "Alexander McQueen" and started fucking with antlers, my brain and my heart went in different directions. While my brain knew Jinkx had this in mind...

...my heart hoped for a decidedly different homage: I've been waiting five seasons for a queen to have the tucked cajones to pummel the runway in a recreation of Santino's infamous Sexy German Deer Lingerie look from his season of Project Runway.

After all, imitation is flattery, and flattery is the most direct path
to Santino's pants, right? Jinkx could have recreated one of
those looks in candy, and it would have been ...well, a big swing, but
an unforgettable runway moment, and like Mama Ru says, it do take nerve. And the worst that could happen is that
she'd have to lip synch "Malambo No. 1," right?

Dear Season Six hopefuls: please, please, please, I want one of you do this.

04/12/2013

It's the question we've all been asking, ourselves and each other: Who will win RuPaul's Drag Race season 5? I loved assembling my mid-season analysis post, and the more I examined this season from a statistical-records perspective, the more nuanced the question became.

1. What do past seasons' Top Four records give us?

For my purposes, I took the records for the Top Four of each previous season, as of the conclusion of the Top Four Ball challenge. I made a separate column for explicit wins, then grouped together the combined wins and top-three counts, the combined Safe and low-but-safe counts, and the number of Lip Synchs.

As we've discussed in the past, with the exception of Season 3 (where Raja and Manila finished with identical records), the queen with the most challenge wins has always won their season. It's also interesting to note that the runner-up has always had a better win/high record than the third-place finisher, even though, in every season except Season 2, the second and third place finishers had the same number of challenge wins. Finally, it's also potentially-telling to note that the fourth place finisher nearly always has the weakest record of the group, either in wins or wins/highs, if not both.

So, what does that mean for Alaska, Detox, Jinkx, and Roxxxy?

2. The next challenge is very, very important for Jinkx and Roxxxy.

Jinkx and Roxxxy are neck-and-neck at two wins each. At this point, Roxxxy will not be able to catch Jinkx in wins/highs, but that's not necessarily a deal-breaker: BeBe had a weaker win/high record against Nina, and had a lip synch where Nina didn't, and still won the crown. Their overall records are actually very close, and either of them winning the next challenge has the power to establish clear dominance.

Here's another interesting fact: look at the total wins for Top Four in the last two seasons, which had a similar number of challenges to this season. If you total the challenge wins for the Top Four, compared to the number of challenges in the season, it shakes out this way:

Season 3: 10/12 (83%)Season 4: 10/11 (91%)Season 5: 7/11 (64%)

In other words, this season's Top Four have fewer challenge wins among them total, which potentially makes this final challenge the most decisive Top Four episode we've ever had.

3. The next challenge is also very, very important for Alaska and Detox.

Simply put: unless one of them wins the next challenge, neither of them realistically has a shot to win the crown. If Alaska wins the next challenge, and Roxxxy does poorly, Alaska would surpass Roxxxy's record, putting her right at Jinkx's heels. Detox's slope is steeper, with few wins/highs compared to the other queens, but this challenge win would put her at two wins, same as Jinkx and Roxxxy, and solidify her legitimacy in the Top Three.

4. Could Roxxxy Andrews be America's Next Drag Superstar?

Yes. As a winner, Roxxxy is an answer to a critique often lobbed at RuPaul's Drag Race: the show doesn't cast enough bigger girls, and that the thick girls they do cast often don't represent well. Roxxxy's peanut buttery crown would be a final response to that complaint. This was also sold as the year that RuPaul's Drag Race would bring in the best of the pageant circuit, and with Alyssa and Coco gone, Roxxxy is the lone pageant queen remaining. Compared to the model-thin, artistic-conceptual queens who won Seasons 3 and 4, Roxxxy is a very different choice for the crown, and a wholly legitimate one.

And aside from the demographic bullet-points she hits, Roxxxy has done very well in this competition. If she wins the Top Four challenge, she is absolutely a contender for the crown. (Frankly, as long as Jinkx doesn't win the Top Four challenge, she's a contender.)

The only elephant in the room? For the most part, fans of RuPaul's Drag Race aren't rallying behind Roxxxy. I would hate to see it happen, but she could potentially face ugly backlash from the fanbase if she's crowned, like Tyra Sanchez faced (even though Tyra had the clear winning record of her season). Which leads us to the next question...

5. Could Jinkx Monsoon be America's Next Drag Superstar?

Yes. In two words? Fan Favorite. Like Sharon last year, the internet has fallen in love with Miss Monsoon, and if RuPaul calls for a vote, Jinkx can start spending her $100,000 now. She's been touring like a madwoman, selling out every venue she hits, and her star power, both on-screen and on-stage, has frankly already made her America's next drag superstar, even with no crown on her head. All that, plus: she currently has the winningest record, and her eight-week success streak has set a new all-time record for consecutive highs/wins.

If she wins the Top Four challenge, I would bet my life on her winning the season. If she flounders, especially if she flounders while Roxxxy wins the challenge, it becomes less clear-cut.

6. Could Alaska be America's Next Drag Superstar?

Maybe. She absolutely must win the Top Four challenge to have a chance, and even that only puts her on equal footing with Jinkx and Roxxxy. Her chances are certainly improved if either Jinkx or Roxxxy is eliminated; a Top Three with a two-win Alaska, Detox, and either of the other two is suddenly anybody's game.

And if that happens, her relationship with Sharon could very well become an asset, because Sharon has worked her tail off for RuPaul's Drag Race this past year.

What I'm about to say is crass, and very presumptuous, but here's how it is: this past year has shown us a very tailored side of Sharon Needles. She's been playing along with RuPaul's Drag Race like a champ, shilling vodka, touring non-stop, and releasing an album with a title that says, "I could be way less family-friendly." On the other hand, she's also been giving more ambivalent interviews like this:

Sharon: You start off loving to do it, but there is a point where you feel like you have to do it.Interviewer: Will you always have to be Sharon, from time to time?Sharon: Of course. I don't know how to do anything else. I know how to make coffee, but I like the life that I live now. But at the same time, a lot of other people rely on you to do what you do.Interviewer: Where does Sharon draw the line, in terms of going too far?Sharon: She doesn't know yet. I used this year, I created a concept for me which was, "Success comes from compromise." And I've watched people not be successful because they decided not to compromise.

Logo, World of Wonder, and Sharon have had each other by the leash of Alaska since Season Five was cast: Sharon has done everything she can to be a good, bankable Next Drag Superstar for the network, surely in part because Alaska is still in the running for the crown, but on the other hand, Sharon Needles doesn't need RuPaul's Drag Race to drive her success anymore. If Alaska wins, Logo keeps its Power Couple of Drag for another year. If Alaska doesn't win, Logo could potentially lose the franchise power of them both.

Or maybe they both genuinely enjoy working for Logo, and my crass presumptions are completely off-base! Time will surely tell.

7. Could Detox be America's Next Drag Superstar?

Probably not. She'll be remembered as one of the best of Season Five, but her ratio of wins/highs to safe/lows has knocked her out of the running to be called the best of Season Five. Unless Roxxxy's outfit melts off and Jinkx throws a shoe at Michelle at the next runway judging, Detox will probably finish third or fourth.

8. By the way, who's winning Miss Congeniality?

I'd said Jinkx earlier in the season, but I'm changing my tune: her dominance in the competition has won her a lion's share of fans, but with so many people certain that she's going to win the crown, she's less likely to garner Miss Congeniality votes. Instead, I think the frontrunners are likely to be Alaska, Ivy, Detox, and Alyssa.

I'll be voting for Alaska. She's earned special recognition for the way she's given her life to this show: we've been watching her audition tapes since Season One, and frankly, she's the Miss Congeniality of Seasons 4 and 5. She's been more dedicated to this show, and for longer, than any other queen this season. To be blunt, she's probably not winning America's Next Drag Superstar this year, but I don't want to see her walk away empty-handed.

And she's a sweetheart, and that counts.

Finally: Who is the winner of RuPaul's Drag Race Season 5?

Like I said, this race has become very tight, and a lot rides on the final challenge. I'm calling this now: If Jinkx, Alaska, or Detox wins the Top Four Ball challenge, Jinkx Monsoon will win RuPaul's Drag Race. If Roxxxy wins the Top Four Ball challenge, I'm not commiting to a prediction--it could genuinely go either way.

What do you think? Sound off in the comments below! Also, if you want to keep up with me, let's hook up on Twitter and Facebook. Stay tuned, darlings!